Clever Elsa
HERE was once a Man who had a daughter called Clever Elsa. When she was grown up, her Father said: ‘We must get her married.’
‘Yes,’ said her Mother; ‘if only somebody came who would have her.’
At last a suitor, named Hans, came from a distance. He made an offer for her on condition that she really was as clever as she was said to be.
‘Oh!’ said her Father, ‘she is a long-headed lass.’
And her Mother said: ‘ She can see the wind blowing in the street, and hear the flies coughing.’
‘Well,’ said Hans, ‘if she is not really clever, I won’t have her.’
When they were at dinner, her Mother said: ‘Elsa, go to the cellar and draw some beer.’
Clever Elsa took the jug from the nail on the wall, and went to the cellar, clattering the lid as she went, to pass the time. When she reached the cellar she placed a chair near the cask so that she need not hurt her back by stooping. Then she put down the jug before her and turned the tap. And while the beer was running, so as not to be idle, she let her eyes rove all over the place, looking this way and that.
Suddenly she discovered a pickaxe just above her head, which a mason had by chance left hanging among the rafters.
Clever Elsa burst into tears, and said: ‘If I marry Hans, and we have a child, when it grows big, and we send it down to draw beer, the pickaxe will fall on its head and kill it. So there she sat crying and lamenting loudly at the impending mishap.
